


for all time

by drashian



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Developing Relationship, M/M, Outing, Trans Character, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 20:03:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drashian/pseuds/drashian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wilson assumed that House would already know all of his secrets which, to be fair, should have been a safe bet.</p><p>House walks in on Wilson bare-assed but it's not for any of the usual reasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for all time

**Author's Note:**

> _when you feel embarrassed then i'll be your pride_   
>  _when you need directions then i'll be the guide_   
>  _for all time._   
>  _for all time._
> 
> so I've been rewatching House lately. My favorite show from my middle school years. So I wrote my favorite kind of fic (transfic) for my favorite ship (House/Wilson) from my favorite show (House) set during my favorite season (season 2). So yeah, purely self-indulgence. Luckily for everyone else, my self-indulgence gets published on the internet.
> 
> (Title is from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKmGJParYno).)

It is possible, of course, to hide plenty of things from someone and to be friends with them for decades. But most people weren’t best friends with Gregory House. Which is why Wilson thought it safest that he always assumed that House knew everything about him and to not be surprised when all his deepest secrets were common hospital knowledge by lunchtime whenever House felt it convenient. This had been his experience for many long years of friendship.

\- - -

So House walked in on him bare-assed. That wasn’t precisely new; similar things had happened before.

All three of them—House, Wilson, and the nurse holding the syringe still buried in his gluteus maximus—froze.

“Bad time?” House said, his eyes still fixed on Wilson’s exposed ass.

“No, perfect time. Stay for a chat.” Wilson nodded at the nurse, who finished lowering the plunger and pulled the syringe out. She taped gauze across the injection site and disappeared.

House narrowed his eyes as Wilson buckled his pants. “I was busy with moving into your place and I didn’t get to refill my prescription. Normally I do it myself.”

House’s eyes remained narrowed. Wilson cocked his head, staring back at him.

After a moment, a grin broke out across Wilson’s face. “You have no idea what I’m talking about.”

House frowned, shook his head. “Did I... miss an e-mail? You know how bad I am at checking that thing.”

“No way.” Wilson laughed, shaking his head. “No fucking way. This is too good.”

House stood there, gesturing vaguely that he was still lost. Wilson cackled as he left the exam room. “You’re never gonna live this down!” he called as he headed towards the stairs.

\- - -

It was only a few hours before House was bursting into his office—through the balcony door, Wilson noted—demanding to know why he hadn’t been told.

“I thought you already knew,” Wilson said simply, shaking his head and closing his patient file.

“You forgot that you didn’t tell me about your missing wee-wee?”

Wilson rolled his eyes. “Stop being a baby about this.”

House pushed the lamp aside and sat on Wilson’s desk next to him. “Did you tell everyone else and forget _just that one_ person?”

“Are you more hurt that I didn’t tell you or that you didn’t figure it out on your own?”

House paused. “Both.”

Wilson stood, beckoning for House to get off his desk. “Look, it’s you. I figured you had me pinned within a week of meeting me. It was kind of a relief that I wouldn’t have to have this conversation with you.” He watched as House cocked his head and squinted at his crotch. “Except, clearly, I do.”

“So you didn’t tell everyone but me.”

“Do you think Cameron could keep this kind of thing a secret?”

House smiled dryly. “She’d throw you an ‘I Accept You’ party. In my office.”

“Exactly.” Wilson practically had to push House out his door—the front door this time—and he followed. The two fell in stride down to the cafeteria. “I can’t believe you actually had no idea.”

“Was I supposed to suspect my best friend was hiding the goods from me all along?”

Wilson’s eyebrows and volume dropped. “Don’t call my vagina ‘the goods’. That’s just crude.”

“God, I can’t even call you a girl any more. You might start crying.”

“Haven’t yet. But you should watch out, I might be so offended I can’t buy you lunch any more.”

House was quiet all the way to the elevator.

\- - -

“I don’t know how I didn’t notice,” House offered as they sat on the couch, Formula 1 droning on the TV in front of them.

Wilson sighed. “I’ve spent a good deal of time and money so no one would.”

“I’ve seen you piss—“

“It’s fake.”

“No chest scarring—“

“Actually, there is, but I’ve never given you license to examine my torso, so it’s not like you’d see.”

House frowned. “Your wives?”

“Some people,” Wilson raised his eyebrows, “are capable of having adult responses to something like this.”

“You don’t have any kids.”

Wilson frowned at him. “Well, yeah. That’s not necessarily a sign, there are plenty of reasons why—“

“I’ve looked over your records. How’d you keep all this off of them?”

Wilson sighed. “Stop looking at people’s medical records, House. It makes them not trust you.”

“You went to a lot of lengths to get those off record.”

Wilson hummed affirmatively, keeping his eyes on the TV.

“That means you couldn’t have gone through insurance, you probably went to some disreputable place and made sure the records were sealed.”

“Not like insurance covers it anyway.”

House frowned. “True.”

“Or maybe, since I am a doctor and why would I be going to back alley surgeons in Thailand, I had my file at the hospital altered because I know that you’re always going through other people’s things.”

“ _Cuddy_ knows? Cuddy knows and you didn’t tell me?”

“How many times have I said that I thought you already knew?”

“What does Cuddy have that I don’t? Is there a secret vagina club I wasn’t invited to?”

“There are so many things wrong with that sentence I’m honestly shocked.”

House rolled his eyes. “You’re just rubbing this in my face. I thought you thought I already knew? So why hide the records?”

“You’re just agonizing over why you can’t tell a plastic dick from a real one.”

House opened his mouth to speak, but the thought that he really _couldn’t_ tell shut him up.

\- - -

House clasped his hand on Wilson’s shoulder. Wilson bowed slightly under the weight of being used to support what a withered thigh couldn’t.

“I know you’re not looking for my validation, but this isn’t changing anything between us.”

The weight lifted, House picked up his cane, and Wilson heard him leave the room without looking up from his desk. He didn’t even have any papers in front of him he could pretend to read.

\- - -

Cuddy having double doors to her office made for the perfect dramatic entrance. There wasn’t a day that went by without House thanking the architects for this blessing. She looked like she had been waiting for him.

He pointed an accusatory finger at her. “You’ve been withholding information from me.”

She frowned. “About what? You don’t even have a case.”

“Not about a patient. About Wilson! You’ve been deliberately withholding information from me.”

She crossed her arms. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

House started pacing. “Do I really need to spell it out for you? I’m talking about a case of the mixed up pistol and holster.”

Cuddy’s eyes went wide. “He told you?”

House waved her off. “More or less. I found out. The real question is why didn’t you tell me?”

“Wait, he never said you didn’t know. I figured—“

“No one trusts me to not get my fingers all grubby in his medical files.”

“Oh, right, because you’ve never done that before.” Cuddy stood, placing herself in front of House so he could no longer pace. “I thought you knew. It’s Wilson, for Chrissakes, and I figured with you and Stacy—“

House leaned back, narrowed his eyes, immediately on the defensive. “Stacy?”

Cuddy rolled her eyes. “I’m not an idiot and Stacy happens to be a friend of mine.”

“Is there a secret club I should know about?”

“A club for what, people you get overly invested in the genitals of? I think there should be.”

“Well, at least Stacy’s was my business. And Wilson’s my best friend.”

Cuddy crossed her arms. “And the way you keep checking my cleavage?”

House shrugged. “Strictly professional.”

\- - -

House walked into his apartment and handed Wilson tickets to a motorcross race. Wilson opened his mouth to say something about how awful motorcross was, but House had already disappeared down the hall.

\- - -

“What did you look like as a girl?”

Wilson pinched the bridge of his nose. “Haven’t you been told not to ask that?”

“Well, yeah, but obviously it didn’t stick. My main question is are the eyebrows hormonal or congenital?”

Wilson snorted. “No, I had bushy eyebrows since I was a toddler. It was a nightmare.”

“Do you have pictures?”

Wilson rolled his eyes and nodded. “If I don’t show them to you, you’ll just steal them, won’t you?”

House nodded. His eyes were crinkled with laughter.

Wilson dug a rubber band-held package of photos from one of his luggage pieces, the kind that you got from a pharmacy printing your disposable camera. He pulled out a couple dozen photos, all mismatched and from various points in his life.

“See? Kids used to make fun of me.” He pointed at his out of place looking eyebrows on a twelve year old version of himself in a blouse and long hair. “Nowadays it doesn’t bother me.”

House grabbed the pictures and leafed through them, Wilson at his bat mitzvah, Wilson with choppy short hair at sixteen (that Wilson had done to himself), pictures in high-waisted shorts on a tennis court. He landed on senior prom and burst out laughing.

“What? My mom picked it out.” But Wilson couldn’t help but laugh too at his awkward posture in the pink sequined floor-length dress.

“Did you know back then?” House said, suddenly looking right at Wilson.

He met his gaze. “Yeah, kind of. I didn’t know what to do about it until a couple years into college, but I knew something was wrong.”

House nodded once, putting the pictures back into the package. “You were a hot girl.”

Wilson grinned. “Even with the eyebrows?”

“Especially.”

Wilson snapped the rubber band around the photos again and threw it towards his pile of suitcases. “Now you’re just messing with me.”

House shrugged. “You looked awkward and not like yourself. Which, I suppose, you weren’t.”

Wilson nodded slowly, watching his hands fiddle with his t-shirt.

\- - -

House brought both of them beers and he handed Wilson one as he hoisted his leg stiffly over the metal bleacher and sat next to him. Wilson twisted the top off and dropped the cap on the ground. They didn’t look at each other.

“Wilson—“

“Is this to make up for being an ass to me? Because besides coming up with every childish synonym for ‘penis and vagina’ as you can think of, this has been a relatively minor crisis.”

“I’m in love with you.”

Wilson sighed. “I know.”

They still didn’t look at each other.

Wilson continued after a minute of silence and a long swig from his bottle. “This doesn’t have anything to do with—“

“No.”

“I mean, I know that Stacy... And Cu—“

“It’s nothing.” House frowned. “Did you start to say Cud—“

“Never mind.”

They didn’t speak until after the race, after the crowd was almost gone and the mud track was still, the cold bleachers damp from the gray drizzle.

“What do we do now?” Wilson ran a hand through his hair.

House was silent for a while, considering all of the different ways he could lay out exactly what he felt for Wilson, exactly what he wanted, and all of the ways in which he knew they would eventually fail.

He settled on saying, “Nothing. We go back to normal.”

He had already started to stand when Wilson caught his wrist. His hand was warm and enveloped his thin joint completely.

“Why are you mad at me for not telling you I’m trans but you’re allowed to keep something like this from me for years?”

Wilson’s voice was serious but his eyes were smiling.

“I didn’t say years.”

“House, I’m not stupid. And I’m not gay.”

House paused; his face fell. For a moment he had been hopeful in spite of himself. Wilson met his eye and he saw the slight smile hidden there and relaxed.

“Semantically speaking. I am, however, attracted to men,” Wilson said, trying to hold in his laughter. “Just not exclusively.”

House snorted and pulled Wilson up by the hand, leading them off the abandoned bleachers. As he started to drop his hand, Wilson grabbed it, lacing their fingers together. They both smiled like idiots, thinking the other couldn’t see.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. you guessed it, wilson is a trans man and cuddy and stacy are both trans women. house doesn't know about cuddy, by the way. he isn't a chaser, he just has extraordinary luck.  
> 2\. yeah, i know that normally motorcross tracks don't have those horrible aluminium bleachers but roll with me here. it's a good image.  
> 3\. shout out to my partner for coming up with like 80% of the plot to this. i just make the words happen on the page.  
> 4\. i suppose that since this is where my readers are located, i should mention that [i am taking writing commissions](http://princezuko.co.vu/post/69302823487). pay me to make your favorite headcanon a reality! also that's my tumblr and you can follow it!


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